Is Opposing Health Care Reform a Crime?

Is Opposing Health Care Reform a Crime?

WASHINGTON, September 22, 2009–The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently launched an investigation into an attempt by the health insurance company Humana to enlist its customers to fight proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage. The investigation was initiated at the urging of Senator Max Baucus, who said, “It is wholly unacceptable for insurance companies to mislead seniors regarding any subject–particularly on a subject as important to them, and to the nation, as health care reform. . . . I’m not going to let insurance company profits stand in the way of improving Medicare for seniors.”

According to Don Watkins, a writer for the Ayn Rand Center, “It is painfully obvious–and alarming–that Humana is not being investigated for its ‘marketing’ practices. It is being investigated because it had the gall to challenge the assertions of a member of Congress.

“The implication of Baucus’s statement is that Humana must be investigated for in effect defrauding its customers by misleading them about the nature of Baucus’s proposal. But what did Humana’s ‘fraudulent’ claim consist of? No one disputes the fact that the budget for Medicare Advantage could be slashed under the health care bills now in Congress. The dispute is over the effects this will have. Humana claimed it could potentially lead to some of its customers losing benefits–not an unreasonable view–but Baucus insists ‘The health care reform bill we released . . . strengthens Medicare and does not cut benefits.’

“Think of what it would mean for politicians–hardly notorious for their scrupulous honesty–to be able to punish Americans because our claims about the effects of a proposed law conflict with their assertions.

“In a free country, it is not a crime to question the claims of one’s political leaders. If Baucus’s action is allowed to go unchallenged, however, free speech is gravely threatened.”

Obama’s Health Care Deception

Obama’s Health Care Deception

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2009–President Obama has recently gone on record saying that his health care reforms “will keep government out of health care decisions,” that they will enable individuals to keep their current plans, and that they will be “deficit neutral.”

“But,” says Jeff Scialabba, a writer with the Ayn Rand Center, “the President’s eight ‘health insurance consumer protections’ demonstrate the contradictions inherent in these claims. The protections are effectively eight mandates that the President intends to place on insurance companies. These mandates would, among others, prohibit them from pricing their plans according to the health risks of the consumers purchasing them, prohibit them from limiting the amount of coverage a customer receives, require that they pay in full for preventive care, and require that they renew plans in perpetuity.

“Are we really expected to believe that a whole series of new mandates forcing insurance companies to absorb additional costs while preventing them from making up the losses elsewhere will have no effect on current plans–or that this does not constitute government involvement in health care decisions? The only certainty is that Obama’s mandates will affect everyone–even those who like their current insurance plan. Cumulatively, we’ll be worse off for it.”

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A "Uniquely American" Health Care Plan

A “Uniquely American” Health Care Plan

Washington, D.C., August 7, 2009—President Obama, in an effort to sell his socialized health care plan, has said that what America needs is not a free market in health care, but a “uniquely American” government-controlled system. But what would such a plan really look like?

Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?

By Yaron Brook

Government intervention in medicine is wrecking American health care. Nearly half of all spending on health care in America is already government spending. Yet President Obama’s “reforms” will only expand that intervention.

Prior to the government’s entrance into medicine, health care was regarded as a product to be traded voluntarily on a free market–no different from food, clothing, or any other important good or service. Medical providers competed to provide the best quality services at the lowest possible prices. Virtually all Americans could afford basic health care, while those few who could not were able to rely on abundant private charity.

Had this freedom been allowed to endure, Americans’ rising productivity would have afforded them better and better health care, just as, today, we buy better and more varied food and clothing than people did a century ago. There would be no crisis of affordability, as there isn’t for food or clothing.

But by the time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, this view of health care as an economic product–for which each individual must assume responsibility–had given way to a view of health care as a “right,” an unearned “entitlement,” to be provided at others’ expense.

This entitlement mentality fueled the rise of our current third-party-payer system, a blend of government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, together with government-controlled employer-based health insurance (itself spawned by perverse tax incentives during the wage and price controls of World War II).

The resulting system aimed to relieve the individual of the “burden” of paying for his own health care by coercively imposing its costs on his neighbors. Today, for every dollar’s worth of hospital care a patient consumes, that patient pays only about 3 cents out of pocket; the rest is paid by third-party coverage. And for the health care system as a whole, patients pay only about 14 percent.

Shifting the responsibility for health care costs away from the individuals who accrue them led to an explosion in spending. In a system in which someone else is footing the bill, consumers, encouraged to regard health care as a “right,” demand medical services without having to consider their real price. When, through the 1970s and 1980s, this artificially inflated consumer demand sent expenditures soaring out of control, the government cracked down by enacting further coercive measures: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits, and a crushing burden of regulations on every aspect of the health care system.

As each new intervention further distorted the health care market, driving up costs and lowering quality, belligerent voices demanded still further interventions to preserve the “right” to health care: from regulations mandating various forms of insurance coverage to Bush’s massive prescription drug bill.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a “right” to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a “right” to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as the Founders conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.

You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services–no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a “right” to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.

Real and lasting solutions to our health care problems require a rejection of the entitlement mentality in favor of a proper conception of rights. This would provide the moral basis for breaking the regulatory chains stifling the medical industry; for lifting the tax and regulatory incentives fueling our dysfunctional, employer-based insurance system; for inaugurating a gradual phase-out of all government health care programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid; and for restoring a true free market in medical care.

Such sweeping reforms would unleash the power of capitalism in the medical industry. They would provide the freedom for entrepreneurs motivated by profit to compete with each other to offer the best quality medical services at the lowest prices, driving innovation and bringing affordable medical care, once again, into the reach of all Americans.

There Is No Right to Health Care

There Is No Right to Health Care

July 23, 2009

Washington, D.C.–President Obama’s health care reform is being driven by the idea that people have a right to health care and health insurance coverage. “This is wrong,” says Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center.

“There can be no such thing as a ‘right’ to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as our Founding Fathers conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.

“You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services–no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a ‘right’ to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.

“A real and lasting solution to our health care problems requires a rejection of the entitlement mentality in favor of a proper conception of rights.”

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Is Viagra a right or a privelege?

Thanks to President Clinton’s escapades with his intern, we’ve all been exposed to various definitions of sex. There are variations on the same thing, sometimes a person can be more giving and sometimes more receiving of (cough) enthusiasm and effort while engaging in any type of sex act(s).

Viagra, also known as Vitamin V, the blue pill and others, is used for the sole purpose of (cough), maximizing the male experience during a sexual act. There is no other purpose of Vitamin V. It doesn’t help lower one’s cholesterol, combat cancer, clean out sinuses, cure an illness or save one’s life.

Sen. Clinton tells Democrats to fight for Obama

AP – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has urged fellow Democrats to work for Barack Obama’s election as president, telling them “we are on the same team and none of us can sit on the sidelines.”
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